A blog devoted to the actors and public policy issues involved in the 1998 District of Columbia Court of Appeals decision in Freedman v. D.C. Department of Human Rights, an employment discrimination case.

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Israella Bash, Ph.D. was my treating psychologist at the D.C. Department of Mental Health (Spring Road Clinic), in the year 2005. Dr. Bash was a forensic psychologist who was familiar with the court system. The email is dated July 21, 2005. And here we wonderfully are, at least $100,000 later!

Dr. Bash,

I am transmitting for your information a letter I emailed to the office of DC Council member Carol Schwartz. Mr. Gerst is a lawyer who works for Carol Schwartz. Mr. Gerst also happens to reside in my apartment building and knows who I am.
_________________________________________________________

Andrew Gerst, Esq.
Office of the Honorable Carol Schwartz
Council of the District of Columbia

Dear Mr. Gerst:

I am forwarding, for your information, a copy of a pleading I filed in the DC Court of Appeals in litigation concerning my job termination, in 1991, by the law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld. The District of Columbia Corporation Counsel defended the determination of the Department of Human Rights (issued in September 1993) that there was no probable cause to believe that the reasons produced by the employer to support its termination decision, namely, that I suffered from a mental disorder that rendered me unsuitable for employment, was pretextual in nature.

I had met with Deputy Corporation Counsel Charles L. Reischel, Esq. in his office at One Judiciary Square in March 1997, at which time he vehemently stated that he had no intention of devoting the resources of his office to defending the appeal. He said angrily, "I have no intention of serving as Akin Gump's attorney. If they want to defend the appeal, they can do it themselves."

After I filed my brief with the court in May 1997 Mr. Reischel telephoned me to state that he intended to file a reply -- contrary to his statements in March 1997. He stated that his office now had the resources to devote to defending the appeal.

Remarkably, not only did the Office of Corporation Counsel do an about-face in deciding to defend the appeal, but it resorted to the ethically-questionable device of using a sizable quantum of legally-irrelevant evidence to do so.

Ultimately, what did the Corporation Counsel accomplish?

Basically, the District simply bolstered my Social Security Disability claim. (I submitted the District's pleadings with Social Security in support of the claim that I suffer from severe mental illness.) If I remain disabled till age 65, I will have collected aver $250,000 in disability benefits. I also collect food stamps. I have applied for Medicaid. If I develop a costly illness, the District might have to foot the bill for my treatment.

What in God's name did the District accomplish?

Incidentally, you probably know that Council member David Catania practices law at Akin Gump.

Also, the corporation counsel at the initial phase of the litigation was the late Charles F.C. Ruff, Esq. Mr. Ruff was subsequently named counsel to former President Clinton. President Clinton's closest friend, Vernon E. Jordan, Esq., is a senior management partner at Akin Gump.

In addition, the Director of the Department of Human Rights (Margie Utley), who issued the Initial Agency Determination in 1993, served under former Mayor Sharon Pratt Kelley. It was Vernon Jordan, who, in 1990, served as the transition chairman for Mayor-elect Kelley. It may have been Vernon Jordan who vetted Margie Utley. One could draw certain paranoid inferences.

(Keep in mind that the following text was written by an individual who, according to the District, does not have the mental capacity to hold down a job and who is entitled to state and federal benefits because of that mental incapacity.)

2 comments:

The D.C. Corporation Counsel (Charles Reishel, Esq.) said in March 1997 it wouldn't defend my appeal -- admitting that my case was not vital to the District's interests.

Then in August 1997, after it read my Brief filed with the D.C. Court of Appeals, it adopted a "win at all costs" strategy, relying on legally-irrelevant evidence, including the bizarre tidbit that my coworkers genuinely feared I might have been armed and extremely dangerous in August 1989 (I was fired in October 1991).

I have to include this in the script for an episode of The Twilight Zone I'm working on!